Nightfall
by Marc the Unruly
Summary: This is NOT a nice story. It springs from my observation that Harry could easily have gone dark due to Dumbles manipulations. This story explores how bad it could get. It's M for a reason people. It's slightly inspired by Isaac Asimov's story Nightfall from which I plagiarised for the last couple of sentences. Super-Powerful Dark Sociopathic Harry.


A/N I've always thought that the wizarding world was lucky in that, with his upbringing and hidden intelligence, Harry could very easily been a worse dark lord than Voldemort. This is how bad I think it could get.

Edit 29/07/2018 20:26 Fixed some typos and added a couple of lines.

WARNING Mention of Rape.

* * *

Albus sighed, ' _She wasn't supposed to have been killed.'_ Before him lay the broken body of Hermione Granger, pale in death.

Albus wasn't sure if he should allow Harry to see the body as it was much worse than he expected. She had repeatedly been raped, tortured and then murdered before being mutilated further.

Severus had passed on to the headmaster that several of the Slytherins who had taken the dark mark over the summer were planning on ambushing her. If Harry were to be prepared to sacrifice himself, he couldn't have any close emotional attachments. Albus felt that Hermione's parents would withdraw her after the attack, leaving Harry alone. He would remain under Dumbledore's control and could then be guided to his destiny.

Although the headmaster wanted the dark lord defeated, he didn't want to change magical society too much. Miss Granger's ideals combined with Harry's political power and magical strength would have forced large changes very quickly. So, for the greater good, they had to be separated.

After Harry defeated Voldemort, Albus would steer him towards a young pure-blood witch. Harry, even with the bindings that limited him to only a tiny percentage of his true strength, was still a powerful wizard. Bindings the headmaster had initially placed on him in 1981. Every 1,000 to 2,000 years, by the vagaries of chance or genetics, an immensely powerful wizard appeared. Merlin had been the last sorcerer, Harry was the next. This was the real reason Voldemorts curse had been reflected back on him.

The doors banged open and Harry raced to the bed before jerking to a halt. a look of disbelief and horror on his face. "NOOOOO!" he screamed, collapsing on top of Hermione's body, weeping uncontrollably.

After watching Harry sobbing for a good 20 minutes, the headmaster cleared his throat and spoke "Harry…"

Slowly, Harry raised himself off the bed and turned to face the Headmaster, his eyes blazing and magic swirling around him. "Who?"

"Harry, you need to calm down, I know she was your friend-"

"Wife." Said Harry shortly.

Albus paled. "W-wife?" This was much worse than he thought, it would be much more difficult to get him with a pure-blood witch now. Albus didn't realise the danger even now.

Harry, his voice getting colder as his anger built even further, said. "Yes. You know we disappeared from the Burrow for an hour on my birthday? We weren't in the orchard, we were at Gretna getting married."

"But why-"

"We didn't tell anyone because we didn't want to make Hermione more of a target." He glanced back at her body. "It wasn't enough."

Turning back to the headmaster, he ground out in a glacial voice. "Who?"

"We have no proof of who it was." Which was technically true, even though Albus knew precisely who at least some of the perpetrators were, but Harry going after them, as was legal if Hermione was his wife, might end some pure-blood lines.

Harry just got angrier and angrier. "So, you are still protecting the death-muncher scum! Still trying to save rapists and murderers." The nimbus of magic around him grew. Belatedly, Albus realised that this meant that the binding which he had had to renew more and more frequently were about to fail. He tried to draw his wand, but with a guttural growl from Harry, a powerful wave of magic exploded outward.

The energy rushed out, knocking everyone in the castle unconscious. No-one saw a small black cloud burst from his scar and be pushed away until it, along with the golden glow rushed back into Harry and disappeared, like a wave advancing up a beach before retreating. The pulse was so massive, it triggered the war wards on the castle, preventing anyone from entering, but not leaving, the grounds.

A short while later, Harry awoke while everyone else lay deeply unconscious. Being at the centre of it meant that Harry actually received much less of the thaumic blast than everyone else. Harry simply lay there as he analysed memories that were not his own. Unbidden, knowledge of arcane spells and rituals came to him. Tom's memories of growing up in the orphanage, of being sent back there every year. Learning about magic, studying the dark arts. Learning to hate and to destroy. Building up his followers and gaining access to power, money and influence. Persuading the sheep-like pure-bloods to turn on each other and everyone else. He also saw how similar Voldemort's early life was to his own. Unfortunately, he didn't realise how the memories were warping his own viewpoint. The mental shock of his core being unbound after so long, along with Hermione's murder had removed any moral constraints he might have felt. Just as had happened when Tom Riddle broke the bindings Albus placed onhis core.

Harry newly gained knowledge allowed him to see clearly that the whole British Wizarding world was a cesspool of privilege, favours, bribes, blackmail and corruption that tainted everything it touched. The new-bloods were no better, all the decent ones had left the country leaving only the scum.

Standing, he looked at the headmaster lying on the floor. His wand had fallen out of his sleeve and Harry smiled. He lifted his hand and cast a silent wandless disarming spell and the elder wand flew into his hand. Harry immediately felt it bond to him and a rush of energy. He smiled disturbingly and enervated the headmaster.

Somewhat groggy, Dumbledore's eyes widened when he saw the Elder wand pointed at him.

"Legilimens!"

As good as the headmaster's mental shields were, they were like wet tissue paper against a sledgehammer with Harry's now unbound core driving the Elder wand. Harry plundered Dumbledore's mind and saw all his plans and schemes for Harry and the rest of the wizarding world. He saw who Albus suspected of the attack.

"Albus, you know how you need to truly hate to use the unforgivables?"

"Y-yes" he stammered.

"Crucio!"

Dumbledore screamed in agony. Harry only held it for a few seconds before the headmaster fell unconscious again.

Harry levitated the unconscious man to the great hall and set to work while humming the tune of an R.E.M. song.

* * *

Dumbledore awoke in the great hall, bound with magic suppressing manacles from his own office, twitching slightly from the earlier curse exposure.

Looking at the person in front of him he said in a grandfatherly tone that normally worked. "Harry, you must release me."

"I don't think so Albus. I've no desire to be your puppet anymore."

The headmaster paled, Tom Riddle had said exactly the same thing to him many years ago.

"Harry, you need to release me. I know today has been a shock, but I can get you the help you need."

"The same help you gave me when you bound my core in 1981? The same help you gave me when you put me with the Dursleys who hated magic so I would be beaten down? Would that be the type of help you had in mind?"

"Harry, what I did was for the greater good."

"One person's ideas, by definition, are never the greater good, old man." Harry stated calmly. "You knew that I am a sorcerer and still you tried to control me?"

"Anyway, Albus, enough of that," said Harry in a false jolly voice. "I thought you should know, I found the guilty parties and punished them."

"How?"

With that, Harry spun the headmaster's chair around and Albus promptly gasped in horror. There in front of him were 8 crosses with Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Marcus Flint, Gregory Goyle, Vincent Crabbe, Theo Nott and Millicent Bulstrode on them, crucified. All were quite dead. They had obviously been tortured before being eviscerated. All the other students who had been at breakfast when the blast hit, were still unconscious even though it was evening.

Harry then said in a cheery voice, "I know it's a little biblical, but I thought a little wrath of god motif would be good for what I have planned."

Albus sat silent in utter horror before looking at Harry. "You're going dark Harry, you must let me help you before it's too late!"

Harry just stared at him before finally saying. "Of course I've gone dark, Hermione was the only thing that stopped that happening after Sirius was killed. Particularly with you isolating me at Privet Drive. What the fuck did you expect to happen?"

"You'll be as bad as Riddle."

"Oh Albus, that's were you are wrong. I'm going to be _much_ worse. Oh, Alby baby, you should know that Severus confessed to having told the students to kill Hermione so as to hurt me more. How you couldn't see his hatred of me for surviving when my mother died I don't know."

"He said he acted that way to keep his cover among the students." Dumbledore lied, having been obliviated of Harry's Legilimency.

"You could have publicly stopped him and that would have been accepted by the Slytherin students, but you let him continue his vendetta to keep me beaten down," replied Harry.

He stared at the headmaster looking slightly unhinged for a while and finally spoke. "It wasn't my mother's protection that saved me in 1981 was it."

Dumbledore sighed, "no Harry it wasn't, you simply absorbed the energy. You then retaliated and destroyed his body. It did give you the scar though."

"A scar that contains a Horcrux. Well, it did until a little while ago anyway. A horcrux you knew about. What was it you said, ' _Scars can be useful, I wouldn't remove it even if I could._ '"

Albus looked stunned. "It's gone."

"Yes, along with all the obliviations you performed. I'm surprised even you were able to keep a lid on me almost destroying Privet Drive after the binding broke when I was 3 due to Vernon beating me. It's amazing what the sheep will believe."

Dumbledore paled, it seemed all his secrets were known.

"Anyway Albus, you know that Merlin was the last sorcerer, but do you know what the previous one did?"

Dumbledore could only shake his head, so Harry replied. "Hermione worked out that he destroyed Atlantis which caused civilization to fall, she called it 'the long night'. While you were helping the Allies defeat Hitler and Grindelwald, did you ever hear of a muggle called Albert Einstein?" Albus nodded and Harry continued. He once said ' _I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones._ ' Did you know the muggles have weapons that can kill almost everyone on the planet in less than an hour?"

Albus looked horrified as he began to get an inkling of what Harry was planning. "You're insane." he said in a flat voice that was tinged with disbelief.

Harry just smiled and said with an amused voice. "And your point would be?"

With that, Harry started towards the entrance. "Anyway Albus, I must be getting on, I have a war to start. I'm sure as the sole survivor of Tom's attack on the castle, I can persuade the light and dark to slaughter each other, the trick will be getting the muggles involved. I mean, I could just kill them all, but where would the fun in that be? Don't worry, it's all for the greater good."

With that, Harry blasted open the front doors open and exited. As he walked away, Albus only had one thought looping though his mind. ' _What have I done?_ '

Harry paused and cast a single spell back at the castle before continuing towards the deserted gates. He saw aurors come around a corner in the path from Hogsmeade.

As he approached the gate and flung it open to allow the aurors in, he willed tears into his eyes and said. "Thank Merlin you are here, Voldemort's at the castle, he's killing everyone."

Behind him, a crimson glow began growing, strengthening in brightness, that was not the glow of a sun. Quickly, the Fiendfyre destroyed the castle and everyone in it.

The long night had come again.

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I hope people found that interesting, I don't expect anyone to say it was nice! Please Review.


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